David Maxwell

“ In the annals of Scotland there is no name amongst the unworthiest of her sons,—Monteith the betrayer of Wallace, Cardinal Beaton, the ruthless persecutor, Dalziel, with a monomania for murder and oppression,—so utterly detestable as that of the dashing cavalier, Claverhouse. His portrait is that of a haughty, self-centred man; one would think too proud for the meanly savage work he was set to do, but which, with fell intensity, he seemed to revel in doing. ”

“ And then the sentiment of patriotism has ever been more pronounced in Scotland than in England. As a rule, English Nationalism was, after the Norman Conquest, even in the most disastrous times, safe and self-assertive. On the other hand, Scottish Nationalism was at one period, for a time, entirely lost; it was often in extreme danger, and was saved only by extreme efforts,—as we might say, “by the skin of the teeth.” Can we wonder then that fervid patriotism pervades,—becomes obtrusive even, in Scottish literature; and that this literature almost deifies the National heroes? ”

“ We feel a yearning pity, almost akin to love, although stern justice gives her blame as a woman, a wife, and a Queen. That pitiful winter’s morning in Fotheringay Castle, in 1587, brought to Mary, by the headsman’s axe, a cruel death, but also a kind release from captivity and unrest.
And what of her rival queen and kinswoman, “that bright Occidental star,” Elizabeth? A woman with a strong masculine intellect, of dauntless courage, one fitted to rule and govern, and advance a nation. ”

“ Lord Dundee came to Edinburgh, for some time hovering like a hawk over the then sitting Convention. The Duke of Gordon still held the Castle for King James; Dundee had an interview with the Duke and advised “no surrender,” he then, with a few horsemen, left the city. (We all know the ringing song in which Sir Walter Scott narrates his departure.) Like a fiery-cross he went through the highlands, rousing the clansman to battle for the fallen Stuart King. The man must have had a dominating personality; in a short time he had assembled an army, feeble in discipline and cohesion no doubt ”

“ The English treason laws, and malt-tax were extended to Scotland. The Scottish representatives in the Commons complained that they were not treated as equals by their fellow-members—not as representing a free nation, the equal of England in its rights and privileges, but a subjugated and dependent province. Sneers at their country, and sarcasms on their own accent, manners, and appearance, were daily met with by men who were proud of their native land, and in that land had been accorded the respect due to gentlemen of birth, breeding, and education. ”

“ And now in his plenitude of power, James began to shew openly what was his great intention, namely, the subversion of the Protestant faith, and the restitution of papal sway in Britain. His brother had so far paved the way for such a change, that he had taken advantage of the reaction of loyalty at the Restoration, of the general disgust at that detestable imposture, the Titus Oates’ “popish plot,” and of the discovery of the atrocious Rye House plot, to make his government despotic. He had, by his foul example, sown the seeds of immorality and corruption broadcast through the national life. ”

“ Prince Edward, who succeeded Henry as Edward VI., was twelve years of age when his father died, and he reigned only four years. Then there was the painful incident of Lady Jane Grey being pushed forward by her ambitious kindred as a claimant to the throne; the venture being death to her and to them. And then Henry’s daughter by his first wife became Queen. A rigid Catholic, she at once took steps, intolerant, relentless, and cruel, to re-establish the old faith. The savage persecutions of her reign have rendered it for ever infamous. She goes down through all time as the Bloody Mary. ”

“ Mary refused him the crown-matrimonial, and they very soon fell apart. Mary was not forbidden to have her private chapel; an Italian singer in this chapel, David Rizzio, became a favourite, he acted as her secretary, and was admitted into the inner circle of Holyrood. One evening the supper-party was broken in upon by Darnley and a number of his associates, and Rizzio was dragged out to the landing, and by several weapons barbarously stabbed to death. Mary’s fair countenance and gentle voice were mated with an iron will, persistent in carrying out her hatreds to the death. ”

“ The history of the Scottish Reformation is an entirely different one. Instead of being originated and fostered by State authority, it was a fierce and obstinate battle with such authority. Scotland was then under one of its disastrous regencies, that of Mary of Guise, the widow of King James V., acting for her infant daughter Mary, known afterwards in history as the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of Scots. ”

“ With Strathclyde, west of the Solway, under a Scottish prince, the map of the Kingdom of Scotland was now broadly traced out.
Edgar commuted the annual Welsh tribute to 300 wolves’ heads. He appointed standard 43weights and measures, maintained an efficient fleet, and was altogether a fine example of a man who—although of small stature and mean presence—by vigour of mind and will, ruled ably and well in rude times. He was really Basileus,—lord-paramount of all Britain. ”

“ In a war which in 1294 broke out between France and England, Scotland allied itself with France. Then Edward assembled a powerful army and invaded Scotland. He gained a victory near Dunbar, and made a triumphant march through the Lowlands. The country was divided within itself; the powerful Bruce faction was arrayed against that of Baliol. Baliol made a cringing submission to Edward; and Bruce sued for the nominal throne, as tributary sovereign of Scotland. “Think’st thou I am to conquer a kingdom for thee?” ”

“ Useless to talk to men frenzied to despair of loyalty to a King, who, in his life of unhallowed pleasure in distant London, heard not, or cared not, for the bitter cry of the people whose rights he had sworn to protect. ”

“ When the Scottish Parliament met in October, 1706, the whole country was in a state of dangerous excitement. Addresses against the proposed terms of union were sent from every county and town, from almost every parish in the kingdom. In some towns, copies of the Articles of Union were publicly burned. Edinburgh was in a state of wild tumult; the High Commissioner was hooted; the Provost, who was known to favour the obnoxious treaty, had his house wrecked. ”

“ Never in all its previous history had Scotland been so united within itself, or held so important a place amongst other nations, as during the reign of Robert Bruce.
In what are called the dark ages of Europe, feudalism was a general institution amongst the western nations. The Conqueror introduced this phase of society into England; and it soon thereafter spread into Scotland, where clanship had been its forerunner. Under the feudal system, the King was chief; the land of the nation was nominally his, to bestow in large estates on the nobles and great barons ”

“ As they conquered, they killed the Britons or made them slaves, or drove them into Cornwall and Wales in the west, and into Caledonia in the north. They came over the North Sea in families, and thus propagated largely as an unmixed Anglo-Saxon race. But doubtless there were many more men than women in their bands, and there would be marriages with native women. Thus strains of British and Roman blood were left in the new occupants of what came to be England, and the lowlands of Scotland. The Anglo-Saxon tribes in Britain thus became a nation with its own language and laws, manners and customs. ”

“ In the first year of the tenth century, Alfred’s son, Edward (styled the Elder, so as not to confuse him with later Edwards) , began a reign of 41twenty-five years. He was a strong king; through all his reign he had conflicts with the Danes, who had settled in the north and east of England; always beating them, and then having to quell fresh insurrections. And he made himself Over-King of the Scots and Welsh; so he was the first Anglo-Saxon king who became lord of nearly all Britain. Wessex, Kent, and Sussex he had inherited, Wales, Strathclyde, and Scotland acknowledged him as Suzerain. ”

“ A great personality, like that of Robert the Bruce, could over-master the discordant elements, and make his own authority paramount; but amongst his successors there were several weak monarchs, unable to beat down personal rancour and ambition in the council and in the camp. And one great curse to Scotland in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, was the comparatively large number of regencies, from the under ages of monarchs at their accession to the throne,—thus creating jealousy, rivalry, and partizanship amongst the more powerful nobles. ”

“ Cumberland had at Carlisle, where the prince had unwisely left a small garrison, begun a course of atrocity; and he now went over the Highlands, a very demon of cruelty and destruction. This prince of the blood-royal of England gave his soldiery licence to shoot in cold blood the male inhabitants, to plunder the houses of the chieftains, to drive off the cattle and burn the huts of the peasants; to outrage the women. ”

“ The political destinies of England were now under the arbitrament of the sword, and religious dominancy would be with supremacy in arms.
In Scotland in 1644-5, blazed like a terrific meteor, the course of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose. He had been a Covenanter—vehement, as his nature ever was—but through jealousy of Argyle and other nobles, he took the King’s side. He raised an army of Irishmen and Highlanders, and at Perth, Aberdeen, and Inverlochy in Argyleshire, he defeated troops superior in numbers and discipline, by the 195fierceness of his onsets, and rapid strokes of strategy. ”

“ The Celts were not indigenous to Britain. It is hardly possible to trace in any—in the very earliest peoples, of whom history or archæology can speak—the first occupants of any one spot on the earth. Science is ever pushing back, and still farther back, the era of man’s first appearance as fully developed man upon the globe. And in his families, his tribes, and his nations, man has ever been a migrant. ”

“ The short reign of James was one of the saddest periods in Scottish history. He had refused to take the usual coronation oath, which included the maintenance of the established church. In spite of this refusal—which impaired the validity of his right to rule—a weakly compliant parliament expressed the loyalty of absolute submission. The law against conventicles was extended to the presence of five persons, besides the family attending domestic worship. If the meeting was held outside the house—even on the door-step—it was to be considered a field-conventicle punishable by death. ”

“ The objects were declared in the opening speech to be, to put down the Scots by the sword, and to raise money to pay the costs which had already been incurred in the war. To rouse their patriotism, the King read an intercepted letter from the Lords of the Covenant to the French King, asking for assistance, in the name of the old alliance between the two countries. But the appeal fell flat, the English Commons looked upon the Scottish insurgents more as allies than as enemies, and with kindred grievances to be redressed. ”

“ Latin was the official language in Roman Britain, and it would be known and probably spoken by the 9well-to-do Britons in the towns. But it never amalgamated with the old Celtic-Welsh of the common people. Celtic, although in many respects a well-constructed language, is not a pliant one—is not adapted for readily intermingling with other tongues. It has in its various dialects, which have through the succeeding centuries maintained their existence in Wales, in Ireland, and in the Highlands of Scotland, kept itself altogether apart from the English language ”

“ The growth of a people out of semi-barbarism and tribal diversity, to civilization and national autonomy, is ever an interesting study. This growth in Scotland included many elements. The Roman occupation of Southern Britain banded together for defence and aggression the northern tribes. For centuries after the Roman evacuation the old British race held the south-western shires, up to the Clyde; the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria extended to the Frith of Forth; there were Norse settlements on the eastern coast, in Orkney, and the Hebrides. ”

“ When, on the return of Earl Godwin from exile, there was a general exodus of 56the Normans, whom Edward had placed in high positions, many of them went to Scotland, and were well received by Macbeth. He appears historically, in spite of our great poet’s portraiture of him, to have been an able monarch; and he might be said to represent Celtic supremacy in Scotland, as against the tendency to subvert it by Anglo-Saxon alliances. Duncan had married the daughter of Siward, Earl of Northumbria, and Macbeth had to resist the attacks of Siward on behalf of his grandson Malcolm. ”

“ Altogether the ‘Library’ has reached a high standard with its initial volume.”—Eastbourne Observer.
“Those who can appreciate a good story told in plain and simple language will probably find a good deal of pleasure in perusing ‘Children of Chance,’ by Herbert Lloyd. It is altogether devoid of sensationalism. At the same time one feels an interest in the various couples who are introduced, and whose love-making is recorded in a very agreeable manner.... Mr. Lloyd succeeds in depicting an effective scene at the final denouement, the period before it being attractively filled in. ”

“ Glencoe had largely weakened the popularity of William in Scotland, and his hostile action towards the Darien scheme excited hatred and disloyalty. Jacobitism, instead of wearing itself out, became more deeply rooted and more formidable. The golden link of the crown, which during the seventeenth century had been the only official tie between the two nations, seemed a fragile one; 272and the King saw, with the prescience of a statesman, that there must either be closer union, or entire separation. ”

“ Like a tower strong to the eye, but with its foundations undermined, the fall of which on any shock may be sudden.” We might add to the above causes for what seemed premature decline, his knowledge that he had a host of bitter and deadly enemies, ever plotting against his life. To live in constant dread of assassination, will eat as a canker into the bravest of hearts. ”

“ As a rule—and indeed the custom has not yet entirely ceased in the country districts of Scotland—wives retained their full maiden names after marriage, and in both sexes the christian or given name was held to be—as doubtless it virtually is—the proper designation of a person,—the surname indicating the family or clan to which he or she belonged. On Scottish tombstones to this day, the inscription for the loss of a child by a married couple will read as “Son of John Smith and Barbara Allen.”
2. The comparatively low value of Scots money is always to be taken into account. ”

“ There was a sort of debatable land of moor, forest, and morass, where neither national nor forest-law was paramount. On both sides Wardens of the marches were appointed, with a mutual understanding to prevent border-raiding. But the Wardens themselves were generally heads of the great neighbouring families, and they often broke their own laws, by sheltering or encouraging offenders. Altogether the picture which we gather from the history of Scotland in 78the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is not a pleasant one to dwell upon. ”

“ The Norman victory at Hastings brought to the Scottish court, then at Dunfermline, a number of English refugees—these were a leaven of higher culture and refinement amongst the rude thanes and chieftains, and tended to further the advance of civilization, of letters and the arts of life, throughout 57the northern kingdom. And numbers of Normans also came and took service under Malcolm—and thus it came about that not only in England, but in Scotland also, most of the noble families have in them a strain of Norman blood. ”

“ In hot pursuit, to give no time for raising a Royalist army, Cromwell followed the king. He left General Monk with a small army to complete the subjugation of Scotland.
Six days after Charles arrived at Worcester, Cromwell was there, at the head of thirty thousand men. On the 3rd of September—being the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar—a desperate battle was fought on the banks of the Severn, and the inferior Scottish army—for comparatively few English Royalists had joined on the march—was utterly routed. Three thousand Scots were slain in the battle, and ten thousand were made prisoners ”

“ Just at this time, the invention of logarithms, by a Scotch laird, John Napier of Merchiston, near Edinburgh, was becoming known in the then comparatively restricted scientific world. Logarithms are prepared tables of numbers, by which complex problems in trigonometry, and the tedious extraction of roots, can be performed by the simpler rules of arithmetic. To the well-educated, they save much time and labour; in the art of navigation, they enable the mariner who may be unskilled in mathematics, to work out the most intricate calculations. ”

“ Charles came to Scotland to try to win over the Covenanters to help him against his Parliament. He would almost go the length of renouncing episcopacy, and he ratified the deeds of the Glasgow Assembly. But the Scots were on good terms with the English Parliament, and were even sanguine of extending the presbyterian covenant into England, where an anti-prelatical spirit was, under the now assertive puritanism, rapidly rising. ”

“ Malcolm married Margaret, the eldest sister; she was a noble woman, learned, pious, and charitable, doted upon by her husband, and ever influencing his fierce nature for good. Thus connected by birth with the heir of the old race of English Kings, Malcolm invaded Northumberland on behalf of Edgar; but William was too strong for him, and in turn invaded Scotland. William marched as far north as Abernethy, where he forced Malcolm to do him homage. William never really subjugated Northumbria north of the Tyne, but built Newcastle as a border fortress. ”